“It’s like someone who puts their art over everything and how women rarely are art monsters because their spouses don’t do shit around the house. Instead, great artists are men who lead elaborate sex-trafficking rings.”
“Hm. Woman inspires horror in man: the horror of his own carnal contingence that he projects on her.”
“What?”
“De Beauvoir.”
“Stop trying to impress me.”
“I can’t be nice to you. I can’t impress you. What can I do?”
“Nothing. Isn’t that what your whole dissertation is about?” Then, because I couldn’t help myself: “She and Sartre had an open relationship, you know.” I needed to convince him. I was dissatisfied with anything less than complete understanding, a challenge that both incensed and thrilled me.
He leaned back in his chair, unconvinced. “It was more complicated than that.”
“When is it ever not more complicated?”
“It wasn’t all sunshine and roses, especially for her. Just saying.”
I pressed my lips together. “Okay, Mr. Philosopher, how come there’s no other relationship in our lives where we’re forced to choose? No oneis like, you need to choose between your parents, or you can only have one friend or one kid.”
“You could only have one child in China for years, so. And you’re not sleeping with those people. It’s different.”
“So, you’ve never slept with any of your friends?”
His mouth twitched.
“Anyway, I don’t even think you believe what you’re saying. Jay says you just like to be contrarian.”
He broke into a big smile, and all of me went soft. “Jay might be onto something.” Picking up the book, palming the cover, “But I do believe what I’m saying. Cool cover.”
“I know, right?”
It was a photograph of artist Hannah Wilke, ass out in sheer tights, one boot planted on a chair while she’s angled over her desk.
“See.” Tristan ducked to catch my eyes. “We don’t always have to disagree.”
I held my breath. “There’s this part where the author writes about Artemisia Gentileschi. She did that famous painting of the two women holding down the man?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, at her rape trial she was forced to put her fingers in this torture machine to prove she was telling the truth, which, of course, could’ve ruined her fingers and ended her painting career. She had to say it over and over: It’s true, it’s true, it’s true. And back then rape was considered disrespectful to the men in the girl’s life—it wasn’t about the violence of the act—and girls got married off to their rapists to protect their father’s name…”
I trailed off, flustered. I’d been struggling to relate this story to something I’d read in college about a young enslaved woman who set her master on fire after he raped her. Her enslaved boyfriend dumped her because he didn’t want to “share” her with their owner. The author argued it was the power of Black love that gave the slave woman the strength to set her master on fire so she could be with the man she really loved. I remembered reading that and thinking, Why is this the lovestory I’m being given? Why wasn’t her boyfriend more concerned with the safety of her body rather than being the only man who touched it? How did this have anything to do with love? It felt related to Artemisia, and both felt related to me, but I couldn’t cement this relationship in language. That was why I needed to write.
I half expected to look up and see Tristan on his phone. The last time I told this story to a man, it was shortly after opening my relationship. He, like most men I dated then, was more interested in what he considered the sexual promise of polyamory than any philosophy behind it. It was just another sphere for him to exert power, to be a man, to get off.
But Tristan said, “I want you to finish.”
I touched my now-cold hot chocolate, biting my lip to stop from smiling but couldn’t, so I looked at the table, embarrassed by my giddiness. “There’s this part I love when the author talks about the origin of monster. In Latin,monstrare, to show, derives frommonere, to warn.”
He leaned forward. “So, what are you here to show us, Catherine St. Clair?”
“I can’t even clean the crumbs off my laptop properly so probably nothing.”
He laughed. “Maybe the book about your parents is it.”
I didn’t remember telling him about this.
